D*A*M TB-00 Tone Bender

D*A*M (Differential Audio Manifestationz)

The D*A*M Tone Bender TB-00. The failed start. Long story short. September 2011, we had some Tone Bender MKI type enclosures made. The TB-00 and the TB-02 we called them. The TB-00 was to replace the 1966 pedal we made and the TB-02 the Pro MKII that we made. Things just never rolled right. The painters made boo-boo's, planned components became discontinued, things just got held up left right and centre.

As previously mentioned the TB-00 was to replace the 1966 so it was planned as a two transistor Vox style Tone Bender. We made a grand total of 11 units like this most of which went to Japan. Fast forward 2013. I dug out the few enclosures we had left along with an set of unused prototype enclosures. These were all made up with three transistor MKI style circuits.

All these MKI type Tone Benders have been assembled by Linzi with the circuit and transistor set-up all done by myself. These were tuned as a somewhat refined version of a 'stock' MKI with some of my own bias tweaks added to stabilize the circuit. The Attack control has a pretty even sweep from minimum to maximum and the general tone is pretty tight. The aim was to make the Attack control give-up a usable musical tone on all settings, a little less of the radio dial type thing that can occur with the MKI circuit. There aren't so many artefacts or the overly looseness in the sound with the full-on fuzz tone, the openness and dynamics are all still present just it's all a little more sucked in. The transistor set-up is a single Mullard OC76 and 2 x Mullard OC82DM. The construction style is taken straight from the original MKI's. Linzi chose to do it that way as a nod to the vintage.

FYI - Tone Bender is a registered Trade Mark of Sola Sound Ltd. I held the trade mark from 2007 for several years before handing it over to Sola Sound shortly after I began working with them. They granted me license to use the mark hence the reason for these pedals being called a 'Tone Bender' I do not plan to use the name again with any other D*A*M product.